Outerspace, Snow Creek Wall 5.9

  
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North Cascades, Washington, USA

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The Guy

Trad climber
Portland, OR
Jul 5, 2011 - 09:24pm
 
Just did this route on 7/2. Fun route. We soloed the first pitch and shortroped the second. The hardest part was the nasty descent. Not hard but annoying. I fell once and took numerous branches to the shins and thighs. We left the car at 7:30 and were back by 3pm. There was only one other party on the wall by the time we got to the creek crossing and they were on the headwall pitches. We used a double rack from a .3 to a #2 Camalot and 1 #3 Camalot and one 70m rope. The small finger pieces were good for a couple of the belays.
Index_Climber

Trad climber
Seattle
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    Jun 13, 2011 - 03:00pm
I’ve heard many people talk about the descent with much apprehension and horror. The descent is not a big deal—I’ve done it many times in 30 to 40 minutes. Three mistakes people generally make while descending are that (1) they pick too direct a path down from the summit (you want to trend skier’s right from the summit); (2) they head to the stream below and try to follow it out, or (3) after 15 or 20 minutes, they cut left too early and end up having to rappel; the descent is readily doable without any rappels.

First, follow the obvious cairns down from the summit for 15 to 20 minutes (you’ll initially be trending to skier’s right), then cut left (still following cairns). At this point it can be a bit confusing because there are multiple cairns—the higher trail of cairns will lead you to a rappel point(s); the lower trail (still cutting left) trends downwards and leads you to the non-rappel descent. If you pick the “wrong” trail of cairns and have to rappel it’s not a big deal—descending by rappel works just fine. If you pick the correct cairn trail, you’ll descend down dirty scrambly terrain coming close to the stream—do not follow the trial to the stream (the steam descent works too but adds significant distance and time), rather, keep a look out for cairns to your left—follow these cairns, they’ll take you past the start to Orbit and in a short time back to the base of Snow Creek Wall. If on the descent you cliff-out, or encounter very dicey terrain, you’ve gone the wrong way—the correct descent is mostly 3rd class with a few short sections of 4th.
Seamstress

Trad climber
Yacolt, WA
Apr 19, 2010 - 07:47pm
 
Climbers will often have encounters with mountain goats at the base of the route, neat and unique. There are several possible starts to this route. They all converge on the two tree ledge.

A couple of logistical notes:

The last pitch is very long. A 70 meter rope works best. With a 60 meter rope, you will be short of the top on the last pitch. Plan accordingly.

The last two pitches are the most fun and effortless crack climbing you will ever do.

The descent is ugly. As an old guidebook suggests, bivy on the top and avoid the epic all night struggle down if you summit late. It is very difficult to sight the cairns and follow the traverses acorss very exposed terrain in the dark.

Snow Creek Wall - Outerspace 5.9 - North Cascades, Washington, USA. Click to Enlarge
Photo: Joseph Puryear
 
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